He is becoming too much like Scalped; scarred by heartbreak (but in ways that his mother never was, she loved her human boy but never her own kind like that) and thriving only for the sake of his foals.
The last has left him though, even as he expects another after having cooled his hot loins in the flesh of some barely known mare. It is better that way, he thinks, then to know and care and experience the awfulness of feeling again. He no longer thinks of her - a small blessing that; his nights empty but for wind and star, his mind finally free of her face as if the wilderness had scratched it all away, and maybe it had carved a thick slice of emotion and memory right out of him.
Mandan sucked in a large breath, light glinting off the sharp twisted spires of his horns as his head dipped and swayed. His eyes rolled towards the wicked shadow his horns cast on the canyon floor, but he could smell no one nearby and he presumed that was for the best - he made poor company these days, preferring to remain alone and apart. Why then did he decide to submit to his most basic nature and start a herd? He did not express a true desire for the company or chatter of any mare, not any more, but maybe it was time to give in to the fact that he was completely wild at heart.
To think she thought a kingdom could keep him! Never, just as the thought fades from his mind, struck swiftly from his brain by the cry of a hawk overhead and he tips his broad head back to regard the bird’s path of flight, knowing he could track it just as easily by the shadow it threw against the canyon floor. He moved deeper towards the lush oasis awaiting him around the corner, having discovered it in the aftermath of the Desert flooding. This place seemed rather untouched by everything that had happened recently and he figured that was also for the best, as the big hulking bay stallion strode through his domain.
Roped in brawn and impressive, eyes hard and dark, he called to the two mares that had consented to join him. Of course, their consent was more than likely coerced by some force and he would make no apology for that, having no more mercy left in him for things like that - they would either cope with how feral he had become, or they would wander off in the end, and it mattered little to him. Or so Mandan told himself but a tiny part of him was fiercely glad and fiercely proud that he had started this with them.